German troops serving with the Kfor international peacekeeping contingent in Kosovo have been accused of hiding in barracks "like frightened rabbits" during the inter-ethnic rioting that erupted in the province in March.

A hard-hitting German police report sent to the Berlin government last week criticises the troops for cowardice and for their failure to quell the rioting in which 19 people died and about 900 others were injured.

The charges - the most serious made against the German army since the Second World War - have been levelled by police officers serving with Unmik, the United Nations civil administration in Kosovo.

During the two-day riots between Albanian and Serbs, an Albanian mob burnt and looted 29 Serb churches and monasteries in the southern city of Prizren, and caused several thousand Serbs to flee their homes.

Leaked excerpts from the report on the conduct of the 3,600-strong German contingent based in Prizren disclose that Unmik police were left to fend for themselves at the height of the rioting.

"Despite continuous appeals for help from Kfor, nobody from the military appeared to back up the police," the report said. "Kfor proved to be incapable of carrying out the duties to which it has been assigned."

Further damning evidence, based on interviews with Unmik officers, Serb church leaders and unnamed UN officials in Prizren, was published in Der Spiegel magazine.

The magazine concluded: "The German soldiers ran away and hid like frightened rabbits in their barracks. They only reappeared in armoured vehicles after the Albanian mob had wreaked its havoc and left a trail of destruction."

Col Dieter Hintelmann, who heads the German Kfor contingent in Prizren, insisted that his men had simply obeyed Kfor rules of engagement. They prohibit troops from protecting buildings and allow the use of firearms only in self-defence. "We were acting exactly according to the rules," he said.

However, the Unmik officers claim that the Kfor troops had breached their rules of engagement because they failed to protect them even though they were legally bound to do so.

The allegations have come as a severe embarrassment to Gerhard Schroder's government, which in the past has gone out of its way to praise the German Kfor contingent for the role it played in the troubled province through its excellent contacts with local people.

After the rioting, Serb Orthodox church leaders in Kosovo described the German deployment in the region as a mistake, and demanded the troops withdraw.

So far, the German government has refused to acknowledge publicly the complaints made in the police report. However, the defence ministry is believed to be recommending that the law be changed, allowing soldiers to use tear gas grenades for riot control.

Yes, Kerry thinks we could stabilize Iraq if we had German and French help (with the blessing of Coffee Inane.) In fact, the French would immediately surrender to the Germans who would then hide in the barracks "like frightened rabbits."

This whole business has been a very well kept secret in the American press. For the past 60 years people have been killing and persecuting Christians all over the world, and they basically get a free pass from our press. Sudan is the most egregious, but it's common all over.

Generally speaking, frontline troops are usually brave enough, when it comes to facing the enemy. If they're running to avoid conflict in situations as ambiguous as in the Balkans, it's because they're afraid that they'll be in deep shit with their superiors and their own legal system, no matter what they might do.

And remember - the Germans haven't told the World Court to take a flying leap...

Seriously. You should go where your heart is, not stick around where you're constantly embarrassing yourself in front of your fellow citizens who do things like point out that your heroes murder Catholic clergy and destroy Christian Churches in greater numbers than any other group when they think they can get away with it.

America has protected ZERO Christians anywhere in the Balkans. Under NATO "protection" Islam has risen and Christianity has retreated in the Balkans. The USA has not even been an honest broker - even handedly keeping peace there.

Hey Hoplite, any more Christian killing Muslim terrorists let out of Camp Bondsteel these days????

America was and is right, and two men don't validate your nutjob worldview one iota - if you want to see what happens when American troops go into a Muslim country filled with hostiles, go see your local recruiter and ask for an 11 series enlistment.

Who knows, maybe military service would replace that Orthodox bigotry of yours with a sense of identification with your fellow Americans of all stripes and make a man out of you to boot.

More likely you'd get broken in the process, but it's worth a shot, isn't it?

The entire Dutch government resigned almost *ten years* after their soldiers allowed a massacre of 6,000+ civilians by the Serbs in 1995.

My memory on that is hazy, so I invite correction.

Didn't the UN/Dutch troops actually serve as "traffic cops" in making sure the victims-to-be were loaded onto busses in a calm and efficient manner?

I'm not trying to add to the shame of the event...but my recollection was the Dutch (UN) troops knew they were under a threat, so they assisted in the deed...unwittingly assisting as the loaders of the trains to Aushwitz would have done.

My memory of the incident isn't any better than yours, but I recall that the unprepared and underequipped Dutch troops announced that they were opening a camp to protect the Muslim refugees.

The camp filled up, and the Serbs saw it as a nice juicy target. They quickly overran the camp and the Dutch soldiers fled. 8000+ people massacred.

Destro:

Though I believe that we backed the wrong side in the Balkans, that doesn't mean that I think we should have backed any side at all.

It may be true what you say about the Serbs protecting Christians, but I do know that the combatants in the Balkans know what soldiers they can mess with, and which ones they'd better friggin' not mess with.

No one dares messing with Americans - but Americans are doing nothing that will require a decision for them to be messed with. Why would Albanians attack Americans if the Americans are letting them burn down Churches and kill Serbian children at will in Kosovo? Let alone use Kosovo as a white slavery transit hub? Not true all the time - in cases where Americans stood between the mob and a church the mob backed off but the Americans can't and don't wantto be in front of all those churches all the time. The brass wants to send their boys home alive and not have questions arise from letters describing how their child died protecting a church from an Albanian mob who are supposed to be the "good guys" we helped a few years ago.

Three Kosovar-Albanian suspects of a bus bombing which killed 11 Serbs and injured 20 in Podujevo in February were released Wednesday from United Nations detention.

Their freedom from detention centers in Pristina and Mitrovica followed a Kosovo Supreme Court decision on Tuesday ordering their immediate release.

Belgrade´s chief co-ordinator for Kosovo Nebojsa Covic strongly criticized the decision, charging on Wednesday that the judiciary system established under UN in the province was biased.

"The Kosovo Supreme Court decision is not new or unexpected. That body previously made an incorrect and unlawful decision. The Kosovo judiciary system is nationally biased", Covic told Deutsche Presse- Agentur, dpa in Belgrade.

The defense lawyer of the three Kosovar-Albanians, Tome Gashi, told dpa in Pristina that their release was justice coming late.

Gashi said his clients had been "political prisoners. They were kept in jail to convince the Serbs to take part in the elections, to tell Serbs: We have got the perpetrators. They are Albanians and former fighters of the Kosovo Liberation Army".

The suspects, Avdi Behluli, Qele Gashi and Jusuf Veliu, who were also members of the Kosovo Protection Corps (TMK), were detained for nine months.

The UNMIK administrator in the Kosovo, Hans Haekkerup, had issued an executive order keeping the men in detention pending trial, despite a lower court decision that they should be freed.

The Supreme Court said in its ruling, however, the prosecution lacked the evidence to try them.

"No founded suspicion existed in the case ... Beside the names of the suspects, no hints could be found on the whole documentation of the case so far that would indicate their connection with the mentioned case," the court said.

But the court found "suspicion exists against Florim Ejupi", the fourth and key suspect, who is at large. It said the investigators had discovered DNA traces matching Ejupi´s on a smoked cigarette found where the bomb was triggered.

Ejupi and the three others were arrested by NATO-led peacekeepers in March and April in Kosovo on the suspicion of being members of an Albanian terrorist cell that masterminded and carried out the bombing.

The case suffered a major blow three months after the investigations started when Ejupi escaped from a high-security United States military detention facility in eastern Kosovo.

"This case is an embarrassment," a senior UN source in Kosovo said. He maintained that foreign intelligence services reason for thinking that the three freed men should have been kept in detention, but that Kosovo´s prosecutor and police had failed to translate those reasons into court evidence.

An official of the Kosovo Peacekeeping Force (KFOR) would not comment on the releases, saying the case was a UNMIK matter.

The detective who headed the investigation into the attack has said he does not believe the suspect, a Kosovar Albanian who is also wanted in Germany on manslaughter and attempted murder charges, left the American Bondsteel base unaided.

"My opinion is he did not escape," said Detective Stu Kellock, former head of the United Nations Kosovo Mission´s regional serious crime squad. "I thought a prisoner could not just walk away from Bondsteel. In my opinion he was taken elsewhere for questioning or something and I still do not understand why we, the police in the investigation who held jurisdiction, were not involved."

UN sources believe the suspect, Florim Ejupi, who was wearing a bright orange prison uniform when he vanished and was said to have cut his way through four sets of barbed wire fences with a simple tool, had been working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). His trial would have been a serious embarrassment, they claim.

Capish? Verstehen sie?

In the Balkans, Americans provide no protection to Christians from Muslim killers.

"Hell, small wonder the German people want the US troops to stay there"

Are you sure? I don`t know just *one single* German who wants to keep US troops in Germany... just a few mayors of small villages in the South-West and Bavaria.

" It is to protect them, silly me, and I thought it was only about money."

To protect against whom?

...and whose money are you talking about? About the 1.5$ Billion shared costs Germany pays for the US bases each year, or the few bucks spend by underpaid G.I.s in local shops? While the $ is loosing it`s value nearly every week?

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